Sport: Moving Up in The World

Wall climbing is the latest indoor-sport craze

When they're not hitting the books, most college kids like to hang out. Now some of them are hanging out by hanging on -- to rocks. On a growing number of campuses from Berkeley to Princeton, the latest sport craze is indoor climbing walls, structures of concrete and stone that replicate sheer mountain faces. Fans say that climbing the walls, armed with no special equipment, offers a new high in concentration, exertion (and sheer terror) that leaves jogging and aerobic dance flat-footed.

The nation's largest such facility opened this week at Cornell University. Measuring 30 ft. high and 160 ft. wide,...